SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - Bill Viles has a vision: It's of his family gathered for Christmas dinner in the octagonal dining room of his new home — the Harry Potter house at Bennett Street and Pickwick Avenue.

He reveals this to me in front of his builder, Mike Dobbs.

"We are trying," Dobbs responds.

Construction has taken longer than expected. Dobbs isn't sure if the house will be done by Christmas. That's because he keeps suggesting more Tudor-style touches for the interior and Viles keeps saying yes.

He retired and wanted to build a trophy house — one "with lots of angles."

The focus for the interior is "English Tudor," Dobb says. The exterior is also English Tudor, with a whimsical touch of Harry Potter; the house has two turrets shaped like witch's hats.

Tudor is a style of architecture popular under the Tudors, the ruling family of England from 1485 to 1603. It is characterized by slightly rounded arches, shallow moldings and extensive paneling.

The mundane numbers are these: The house is 5,272 square feet with three bedrooms and 4½ baths. (What could have been a fourth bedroom is, instead, a billiards room.)

And now, here's a quick look at the inside, with an emphasis on the Tudor influence and what makes the house different.

All beams are coated with beeswax, which leaves a coating similar to a stain. Beeswax is produced by honey bees. The beams themselves come from the petrified wood of old, dismantled barns.

Foreign doors: The oversize front door is 150 years old and comes from Argentina. It was purchased through a Springfield antiques dealer for its Tudor-like appearance. An interior door comes from Egypt.

Faces and places: There's a lamb's head design over a fireplace. It's an English symbol of hospitality.

In the master bedroom, the carved face of Sir Galahad — on the men's vanity — stares into the eyes of the carved face of Maid Marian, which is on the larger women's vanity on the other side of the room. When finished, Viles will live here with his fiance Debbie Murphy.

The octagonal dining room is where Viles envisions the 2016 Christmas family dinner happening. The woodwork on the floor is in eight sections, mirroring the eight parts of the ceiling.

"Sunken cypress" comprises most of the flooring. I checked and, yes, this is a thing.

According to a 2014 Los Angeles Times story: Sunken cypress and pine logs can command thousands of dollars for their beautiful grains and long, straight cuts. They are being salvaged from river bottoms across the coast of the Southeastern United States.

The logs were harvested into the late 1800s. Most were lashed together and floated or towed downstream to mills. Many broke loose and tumbled to river bottoms or became embedded in riverbanks. Today, they are perfectly preserved for milling into tables, mantles and — as in the case of the Harry Potter case — flooring.

The 1,200 square feet is over the separate one-car and two-car garages and the corte cochere — a covered entrance large enough for vehicles to pass through, typically into a courtyard. (This one also serves as an outdoor dining area.)

Viles's interior courtyard includes a lagoon-shaped swimming pool that will have a waterfall.

The upstairs has a third bedroom and a billiard room with Tudor-style paneling. It will eventually have plaid, Celtic carpet.

A free-standing, floating spiral staircase twists down to the theater room, which will have a 150-inch TV monitor.

The seating, when built, will be in tiers, like in a movie theater. The molding will give the room the look and feel of the Fox Theater in St. Louis.

Want wine? There's a wine room.

Guess what this is? Dobbs asks.

He points at a small alcove about 4-feet high next to a door leading to one of the garages.

"I have no idea," I say.

It's for storing a grocery cart.

"Will it be a Tudor-style cart?" I ask, joking.

Yes. It will be a Tudor-style grocery cart.

It will be a regular grocery cart interwoven with wooden strips.

The pool outside the Harry Potter House at Pickwick Avenue and Bennett Street on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016.

For some reason, I painfully recall the $7,400 I just spent to have my roof replaced with regular, boring composite shingles.